Congregations Project Summer Seminar 2013

August 7, 2013

During the third week of June, the ISM hosted its third annual Congregations Project Summer Seminar.  Musicians and clergy from eight churches across the United States traveled to New Haven to participate in lectures, worship, and discussions with ISM faculty and friends. 

The year’s theme was Hark the Glad Sound: Inviting New and Returning Christians to Worship.  Throughout the week, participants discussed ways in which contemporary congregations are reaching out to proclaim the Gospel in a society undergoing massive change in technology, religious belonging, generational division, and other aspects of social organization, and also how they might do so more fully. Questions included: How can and do congregations reach out to groups who are underrepresented within the congregation (for example, young adults, non-English speakers, families with young children, those with disabilities, artists)? How might they assess and negotiate the hold of tradition and the allure of the new in worship, music, and the arts? How should they think theologically, as congregations, about the relationships between the language, sounds, and images of Christian worship and those of popular culture?

Leadership teams from the congregations gathered with Yale and guest faculty on the Yale campus for five days to form a diverse ecumenical community of ministers, musicians, scholars, and other church leaders. The curriculum was shaped by the theme and designed to support the congregations’ individual projects, which build on their particular strengths in worship, music, and the arts; to expand their capacity to serve the surrounding community; and to nurture ecumenical partnerships.

Check future issues of PRISM to see the reports from the 2013 summer seminar Hark the Glad Sound: Inviting New and Returning Christians to Worship.

Applications for the 2014 Congregations Project Seminar The Human Body and the Body of Christ are due November 15.

[Back to Prism]